Raising Zaera
by Skyskater
Summary: Il Forte tells the complete story of Szayel Aporro Grantz. The story NOT told in the manga. A continuation of "Mommy."
1. The Start

**_I could not bring myself to continue "Mommy" because it already had that finished feel to it and I could not bear to disrupt it. So I have conceded to write an extension of it. For Satscout, who mistakenly thought "Mommy" would be a multi chaptered story. _**

**_I know Il Forte (Yylfordt) is already dead. And so is Szayel. Please, don't judge me. And this is quite...out of story. So, bear with me here._**

**_Enjoy!_**

* * *

Szayel, or, rather, Zaera Aporro Grantz, was born February 18, quite some time ago. We were in Hueco Mundo then. Come to think of it, I can't really remember a time when we were OUT of Hueco Mundo. He was born in a little shack in the middle of the desert, with that endless crescent moon peeking through the window at my mother. I sat outside. Because, you know, I'm not a huge fan of the blood and guts thing.

We didn't have a father. At least, not one that I could remember. So I thought to myself, "Maybe I could be Zaera's 'paternal' figure...ah, screw it. I'm his brother. That would be wrong...wrong to, like, the fifth degree."

Mind you, it wasn't pleasant, sitting outside a little rundown shack in the middle of a cold desert, the sand blowing in my eyes and getting grit in my hair, listening to my mother scream inside the godforsaken place. No. I wasn't happy. But come on. I was, what, thirteen at the time? Would YOU be happy if you'd been placed in an awkward situation such as that? No. I didn't think so. And if you answer yes, I must ask you: Are you a masochist or something? Or do you just have nothing better to do with your life?

After sixteen long and boring hours in which I gave up trying to wipe the sand out of my eyes, the screaming stopped. And then a second later, a new form started up. A baby's scream. Goddamnit, I thought. Does the screaming never end?

So I walked inside. The baby was there on the floor of the shack, covered in blood and screaming its lungs out. My mother, however, didn't look to be alive at this point. It was as though the pain had gone straight to her head and caused a stroke or something of the sort. I didn't care. When you're a Hollow, as we were, it didn't really matter who lived and who died. Besides, I was pretty self supporting at that point.

The baby, though...The baby. What to do with this mess? First of all, I didn't even deserve to be taking care of the damned brat in the first place. My mother was the one who got herself pregnant. Dear God. If I could reincarnate her, then I would have. Just so she could take care of that...that thing.

Second, I didn't know who the dad was. Heck, I didn't know who MY dad was. So therefore there would be no way for me to package up this little screaming thing and send it to the father with a three cent stamp and a postcard saying, "Dude. Look at WHAT THE FUCK you've done."

And third, I didn't know how to take care of a baby. I mean, what self respecting thirteen year old boy (and an only child, mind you) would know how to take care of a baby?

Anyway, things get a little fuzzy after that, but I vaguely remember picking him up, deciding to name him "Zaera Aporro", cleaning him, and wandering around Hueco Mundo looking for something to feed him so that he would stop the crying already.

I got tired after a while, and I guess Zaera did too, because he finally stopped crying. I sat down for a moment, and before I knew it, I'd fallen asleep. Before I did, though, I saw the vague outlines of three men. Then I blanked.

* * *

After I woke up, I was sleeping in a white bed in a castle. This castle was called Las Noches, according to a sign on the door of the room. At first, I freaked. Zaera wasn't with me. And alright. I'll admit it. I got attached to that pinkette after a few hours of wandering around the lonely desert. Some theories of where he could be ran through my head:

"Maybe he died because he was too hungry."  
"Maybe he was superhuman and grew from a baby to an adult in the span of a few hours and wandered off."  
"Maybe he decided, 'To shit with this.' And left."

Alright. And it turns out that neither of those things happened. Rather, he was lying in an incubator off to the side of my bed. And sleeping peacefully. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least he was alive. At least we were alive. And together. Now that I've managed to seem like a total sap in the course of three minutes, let's move on...

* * *

The three men were Aizen, Gin, and Tousen. They had come from Soul Society because they didn't like their ways or whatever and wanted to wage war with them. Okay, fine. I could handle that. I definitely knew what it was like to want to kill someone. In fact, a few minutes after he was born, I'd been wanting to kill Zaera for screaming too much.

They said they were building an army of Arrancars. I wanted to be part of that army. So Zaera and me (I'd refused to be parted from him) were put in this large white room (all the rooms were freaking white and grey. And I don't want to hear any shit about how, 'Oh, that wall was cream,' and 'This wall is off white, they're very different colors!' I don't care. White and grey. That's all it was. And the occasional black.) and there was this little machine thingy with an attachment at the end that looked like a hand. The hand moved forward, to my face first, and ripped off most of my Hollow mask. It didn't hurt, surprisingly. Well, not much. It felt as though someone had taken a scab off my face.

Zaera didn't cry when his mask was ripped off. For that I was glad. God knows it was hard enough appeasing him without him crying too. We were now part of the Arrancar army. At least, I was. Zaera wasn't old enough yet. So I was given the task of raising him. And I did just that. I taught him, trained him, played with him, for all of my life as an Arrancar and all the way through his infancy, childhood, adolescence, and partly through his adulthood.

This is the story of Zaera Aporro Grantz. The story that WASN'T told in the manga.

Because all unwritten stories need to find an outlet, don't they? What better way than this?

* * *

**I don't really know how this is going to turn out. But, let's just say that I would like you to review nonetheless.**

**Buh-bye!  
Skyskater**


	2. Family

**_THIS IS NOT A TWOSHOT!!! IT WILL BE CONTINUED! CHECK THE STATUS OF THE STORY, PEOPLE!_**

* * *

Zaera was a quiet infant. He didn't do much. I mean, when you're that little thing, like a little burrito all wrapped up in blankets and a hat and gloves and booties, it's pretty hard for you to do anything. Of course, exceptions include sleeping, crying, eating, and shitting. But Zaera hardly ever cried. Except for when he was hurting. But then again, all babies cry when they're in pain, so I assume he wasn't that different.

I would watch him every day, from the time we woke up to the time he drifted off to sleep about twelve hours later. When he wasn't doing anything, I would do something else, like train so that I could be a stronger Arrancar. I would bring him with me to the training grounds, place him in his little cradle off to the side where he wouldn't get hurt, and I would train. And every single moment I was doing that, I could feel his citrine eyes burning into my back. Watching me. Always watching.

When Zaera was six months old, he learned how to roll. When he was around eight months, he started to crawl. Then, when he was a bit older than one, he began to walk. Little baby steps, at first. And then more. And more. Until pretty soon he was mobile enough to get around from place to place.

He was advanced for his age. Even I knew that much. I knew he was going to be smarter and stronger than me, and I didn't resent that. As long as he grew up happily.

He talked only when he had to, but his grammar and pronunciation was perfect. Well, as perfect as you can get in Baby Speak. But it wasn't until Zaera was three or four years old that things started to get interesting.

* * *

I had taken him out to see the real world. At that point, I was one of Grimmjow Jeagerjacques Fraccions, and I could go and depart to and from the real world as I pleased, since my reiatsu wasn't yet big enough to alarm anybody.

I brought him with me one day when he was three and a half. We watched the people walking in the park. There were several people in the park that day. There was a young couple, holding hands and kissing underneath a cherry tree whose pale pink blossoms drifted down around them. There was an older couple, cracking watermelon seeds with golden teeth and scattering the husks to chattering pigeons. And a family.

The family was made of a mother, a short, slender woman with strawberry blonde hair and fair skin, who was sitting on a white and red checkered blanket, tending to two babies, smiling down at them indulgently and ruffling their hair. A father, tall, dark-haired, and semi-muscular, was playing with a little boy of around six or seven, and roaring with laughter. The little boy, with orange hair ruffled up into little, soft spikes, with fair skin and laughing brown eyes, playing catch with his father on the grass. And the two babies, both fair-skinned, one with dark hair, one with blonde hair, gurgling away in their little cradles.

Zaera and I looked at the happy family in silence, and presently, he asked me, "Are we a family, Brother?"  
"Of course we are, Zaera. We've always been a family."  
"Why isn't our family like theirs, then?" His short index finger pointed to the happy family in the park.  
"Because, Zaera, we're not like them."

"Why not?"  
"It's only you and me. That's all."  
"Did we ever used to have a family like theirs?"

I decided to tell him the truth. There was no point in lying to him. Besides, I was worth shit at lying. Especially to Zaera.

"Yes, we did. We used to have a mommy. That strawberry blonde lady is a mommy. And we used to have a daddy too. That tall man is a daddy. We just don't know who our daddy is. It doesn't matter, though."  
"What happened to Mommy, then?"  
"She went to sleep and she never woke up."

Zaera wasn't old enough to understand what death was. But I think he got the gist of it.

"Did Mommy love you?"  
"She did."  
"Did Mommy love me?"

I hesitated. And I knew that he knew that the answer would have been no. Our mother had wanted to abort Zaera. It hadn't worked, he'd been born anyway, and she'd died after she gave birth to him.

There were tears welling up in his amber eyes. I hated it when he cried.

"Zaera, don't cry. Okay? Don't cry. It's alright now. I'll be your mommy if you want."  
"B-but...y-you're not a girl."  
"That's okay. Mommies don't always have to be girls. They just have to be people who love you and watch out for you. That's all mommies are, really. And you've got me, don't you?"

He sniffled a little bit, but didn't let the tears fall. "O-okay..."

And we returned to Las Noches. Needless to say, Zaera was content for a while after that. Of course, I was stupid. There were still feelings under his skin. Feelings that he didn't show, or tell, me. Or anyone else.

Those feelings, feelings of unwant, of despair, of anguish, began to fester inside him. They grew bigger and bigger and bigger as he got older. Of course, I was not aware of these feelings. He was good at hiding those feelings.

Well, alright. I began to suspect something when he was around six or seven. He had these "habits". If there was a chair pushed out at a table, he would push it in. If the place settings were wrong, he'd change them so they were right. I guess you could call it perfectionism. And I didn't think it was normal. Because when I was six or seven, I didn't give a crap whether the soup spoon was next to the salad fork or whatever. Zaera did.

It wasn't until Zaera was a teenager that I learned why he was like that. And by that point, it may have already been too late to convince him otherwise.


	3. Feeling Good

**_EVERYBODY PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS STORY MAY, NO, WILL TAKE ON A DISTURBING TWIST. IF YOU DON'T LIKE THAT, PLEASE STOP READING!_**

* * *

When he was four or five, Zaera assigned the Hollow Grand Fisher a task: To kill that little boy's mother. I don't know exactly why he did it, but I believe that Zaera hated the fact that he didn't have a mother, particularly a mother that didn't care for him, and so he didn't think that that little boy, whose name I now know is Ichigo Kurosaki, should have had a mother either. Like it was a crime to be happy.

Grand Fisher killed Masaki Kurosaki while she and Ichigo were walking home from Ichigo's karate lesson, using the hallucination of a little girl jumping into the river to trick her into jumping in as well. She never came back up.

Even though Masaki was dead, it still wasn't enough for Zaera. He was still "imperfect."

* * *

Truth was, Zaera was perfect. At least, that's what I thought. But he didn't think so. He didn't think he was the least bit perfect.

It had started when he was six or seven. With that OCD-ness, about making sure everything was in its proper place. It got worse as he got older. He was a complete and total perfectionist, even at thirteen, when you're SUPPOSED to be sloppy because you're going through puberty and everything else and don't have time to worry about stuff like that. Apparently, his perfectionism only grew with him. And it got to the point where it was scary. He'd have to have the soup spoon by the salad fork. He'd have to have all the chairs pushed in. He'd have to have all his clothes and books in order, alphabetized or sorted by color. He always put his shoes by the door and never walked inside with them. He never tracked water out of the bathroom after taking a shower because his hair was wet. Everything HAD to be perfect for him.

One day I asked him, "Why are you like this?"  
"Why am I like what?" he asked, not looking up from his book.  
"Why are you perfect?"  
"I'm not."

"...Well, why are you so OCD about little things like if the doorknob's polished or not, then? Or if a chair is pushed out at the table? Why?"

He stopped reading, but his eyes never left the page. Then he said, "Remember, you told me Mom didn't love me?"  
"I didn't say -"  
"Well, you implied it. Remember that?"  
"...Yes...so what?"

"Maybe I wasn't perfect. I'm NOT perfect now. But maybe I was so imperfect THEN, when I was a baby, that she didn't want or love me. Maybe that's why she tried to kill me." The whole story had come out one night when he had been nagging at me and when I had been dead tired. So I'd decided to appease him. And...maybe that wasn't exactly the best thing to do.

"No, that's not true. How could you have been imperfect, Zaera?"  
"I don't know. Maybe I kicked too much, hiccuped too much, moved too much, something like that!" He was frustrated, and I knew it was because he knew that I had no answers to give him. And that hurt.

So I comforted him the only way I knew how.

"Zaera, nobody's perfect, okay? Besides," I said, "you were, and are, perfect enough for me to care about you." And with that, I left him sitting in the chair, his book dangling from his hands.

* * *

I don't know if that helped him or harmed him. But it got worse.

I noticed that he wasn't eating at meal times, or, in fact, any time of the day at all. I thought, _Alright, it's just a phase he's going through. He'll get out of it soon enough, and everything will be back to normal. _It wasn't like that. He became anorexic. Finally, one day, I confronted him about it. Normally, I didn't do that. I let him have his space, his privacy. But this was too big of an issue for me to ignore.

"Zaera," I said to him as he came out of the shower one night. "Why haven't you been eating?"  
He shrugged. "I'm not hungry."  
"Zaera, don't lie. Everybody has to eat. Why are you starving yourself?"

He shrugged. And I knew then what it was: that godawful perfectionism he'd developed.

"Zaera." It was really hard not to shout at him then. "I know why. You think you're overweight. You think that's why she tried to kill you. Because you ate too much or some other shit you made up."  
"That's not -"

I couldn't help it. I snapped then. And, looking back now, maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe I should have just let himself starve himself to death. Because when I snapped, I set off something that was so wrong and twisted that there was nothing that could ever feel right again. For either of us.

"Don't lie to me, Zaera! I'm sick and tired of you trying to lie to me!" I grabbed his wrist, and he winced. He winced. Now, I wasn't even gripping hard or anything. But I knew there was something else he was hiding. I pulled up the sleeve of his nightshirt, and I found scars. And God...I was so freaking angry, there's no words to describe it.

"You've been CUTTING YOURSELF?!" I snarled at him, glaring, so that his reddish-orange eyes clashed with my dark brown ones.  
"So what?" he snapped back. "Not like you'd care!"  
"What do you mean, 'not like you'd care'?! I'm the only person who CARES ABOUT YOU, in case you hadn't noticed!"

"So what? It's not hurting me. I'm not dead."  
"You may not be dead, Zaera, but that doesn't make it right!" I hissed.  
"It makes me feel good," he challenged. And God...maybe it was that, the 'It makes me feel good' that helped drive our sibling relationship with each other down the drain, only to be replaced by a newer, twisted, sicker one.

"Goddamnit, Zaera, you can't cut yourself because it makes you feel good."  
"Why not?"  
"Because that's not normal, okay? You're not supposed to do that! You're supposed to feel good like, when you're in LOVE or some other sappy thing like that!"

"...Love?"  
"Yes, love."  
"What is that?"

I didn't really know how to explain it to him, so I just borrowed a few books from Ulquiorra (seriously. That guy is NOT the type of guy you'd think would have several books on love.) and lent them to Zaera to read. And a few weeks later was when everything started going downhill.

* * *

"That's good, Zaera," I commented one night after dinner.  
"What is?" he asked, looking over at me.  
"You're eating again. And you've stopped cutting yourself."

"So what?"  
"That's good."

The next few minutes were spent in silence, and I could see he was struggling to put words together.

"What is it, Zaera?"

"IknowthissoundsreallyweirdandeverythingbutIloveyou."

"Er...repeat?"

He sighed and rubbed his temples.

"I love you."

"Are you feeling alright, Zaera?"

"Yes...why?"  
"Why did you say that just now?"  
"Because," he said, his voice almost a whisper, "it makes me feel good."

He stood up at that point and kissed me. On the lips. I had no freaking idea what to do. Because, in all honesty, I really was shocked that Zaera was actually opening up.

Then he pulled away. And that was it. He left me standing there in shocked silence, but before he closed his bedroom door, he turned and said, with a little smile, "I love you, Brother."

I said the only thing I could think of, "I love you too, Zaera."

* * *

I didn't tell him that love was supposed to be between a guy and a girl. Heck, here in Las Noches, it didn't matter. Because, frankly, it was pretty damn obvious that Ulquiorra and Grimmjow had deep attractions for each other. Unless all those nights with weird noises coming from one or the other's bedrooms was anything to judge by...

I didn't tell him that love between siblings was different than love between lovers.

I didn't tell him that brothers weren't supposed to kiss like that. That brothers weren't supposed to be in a relationship.

I hid a lot of things about love from him.

Because, frankly, even though it was sick and twisted and wrong, if it made Zaera stop cutting, stop starving himself, if it made Zaera just feel good, then that was a good enough reason for me.


	4. I Can't Stop

**_EVERYBODY READ MY MEMOS!!!!_**

* * *

Incest. That's what it was. And between two guys, no less. I don't even know why I let it go on as far as it did, but I think it was because it made "Zaera feel good." And that was the only thing, really, that was holding us together. Like the peanut butter between two slices of bread.

The other Arrancar knew, of course. And Aizen and the other two men as well. But nobody commented on it, at least, not to Zaera's face. I say Zaera's, because I wasn't too concerned about the remarks being made. As far as I cared, they could all go to Hell. It wasn't a big deal to me. But if someone dared to even mention something bad about our "relationship," Zaera would impregnate them with Gabriel and effectively kill them. So, as a result, Aizen commanded all the Arrancar/Espada to stop making comments about it, so that there wouldn't be any more losses in his "Army."

Barragan was pretty much indignant over the whole thing: "It don't seem right for two guys to be in a relationship! Where do the parts go? It just don't make no sense." And his Fraccion weren't much better...

Halibel was being Halibel and kept quiet, staying out of the whole thing. Her Fraccion were also quiet, except for Apache, who made an offhanded remark, "Zaera's so ugly that he can't get anyone but his brother to be in a relationship with him" that earned her a slap from Halibel and a very infuriated Zaera, who I had to forcibly restrain to stop him from harming Apache in any way, shape, or form. And even then, I'm not quite sure he didn't hurt her...

Stark was being Stark. He was way too lazy to comment on the whole thing, and Lilinette was shoving her hand down his throat and was consequently too busy to remark on the whole affair.

Ulquiorra just plainly didn't care, one way or the other. Although he did say that "it's garbage" or something along those lines. But then again, he calls everything but his romance novels and Grimmjow trash/garbage.

Nnoitra was all, "Isn't your relationship like the one where if you have babies, they'll be retarded?" And another infuriated Zaera incident occurred...I actually thought that remark was pretty funny. Tesla tried to defend Nnoitra, and, well, let's just say that Tesla's eye was missed and mourned by one person: Tesla.

Grimmjow, under Ulquiorra's influence, did not say anything. His Fraccion, which I was a part of, pretty much joked around about it. Not seriously, though.

Zommari didn't give a shit.

Zaera's Fraccion were very supportive of the whole thing.

Aaroniero Arrurerie was all, "That's nice?" for lack of wanting to be cursed with Zaera's wrath.

Yammy said nothing at all.

And Aizen, Gin, and Tousen were all, "Yeah, whatever makes you feel happy and blah blah blah."

So, all in all, it really didn't matter whether or not we were in a relationship. Of course, that doesn't mean I had any right to let it go as far as it did.

* * *

We started out slowly, unsurely, because hell if I knew what was going on and Zaera was the only one reading Ulquiorra's romance novels. I don't really know who was supposed to be the "boy" and the "girl" in the relationship, but looking back now, it seems as though Zaera was in control of it, because, frankly, I didn't want to be in control of this twisted thing that we called a "relationship."

It was one-sided, at least from my perspective. I didn't love Zaera like that. I loved him like a brother and nothing more. But Zaera, well, he was pretty much taking it to a whole new level there.

Of course, he began to suspect something. Began to suspect that I didn't return his affections, even though I said those three words constantly in order to make it seem like a proper relationship. So one night, when he was about fifteen and I was, what? twenty-eight even though I still looked like I was freaking thirteen? the shit hit the fan.

Now, Zaera's not a very pretty person when he's angry. And God, he wasn't JUST angry, he was angry AND sad. Double whammy. And maybe that's why I was guilted into letting him do what he did to me.

* * *

For all those of you who thought I let Zaera rape me in that above paragraph, God, you're sick.

No. He put these little bacteria thingies inside of me that were apparently camera type things that attached to my cells so that he could observe the things I did. I remember it as clear as if it were day:

"You don't love me, do you?" he asked.  
"What d'you mean, I don't love you?" I asked, not looking up from my magazine.  
"You don't love me." This time it wasn't a question, it was a statement.  
"Sure I do."

"Look me in the eye and say that."

I couldn't do it. I just freaking couldn't. And for the life of me, I really don't know why. But that got Zaera mad like you will never believe. And he cried.

"Y-you h-HATE me!" he accused me.  
"I don't hate you!" I said, putting down my magazine and going over to him to try and comfort him.  
"YOU'RE LYING!"

Now, that was probably one of the worst things I could have done at that time. Zaera was stronger than me at that point, and could have easily killed me a hundred times over. But he didn't. Instead, after a few minutes of cooling down, in which the silence was so thick you could cut it with a butter knife, he said, calmly, "Come with me, Aniki (Brother for those of you who are Japanese-deprived.)."

"Where to?"  
"You'll see."

He took me to his lab, which I had visited many times, and he injected me with this liquid which he said was full of bacteria things that would record my every move and record the actions of others around me.

"What for?" I asked him. The shot hadn't hurt, exactly, but seriously. If I was being infected with bacteria, I really wanted to know why. He looked at me in this odd sort of way, and I repeated the question.

"Why are you doing this?"  
"I just like watching over you." That was it. I didn't question it, but maybe I should have. Maybe I should have.

* * *

I think it was at that point that our relationship took on a much more drastic, and painful, turn. For both of us.

Zaera was on something, I was sure of it. I just didn't know what, and I had no proof of anything. His Fraccion were as silent as the grave. But he HAD to be taking something.

Once again, he developed anorexia. And this time, no amount of coaxing could make him stop it. He was stronger than me, so the force feeding option was out of the way, too. As if to make things even worse, he developed fetishism. He had a hair fetish. My hair, specifically, and he always needed to be playing with it whenever we were alone. He hallucinated. He had insomnia. He had every type of freaking problem, and there was nothing I could do to help him with it. Because, as far as he was concerned, I didn't love him. So he was only trying to "keep me close" as best he knew how.

He had made a small plastic doll of me, and one of himself. One day, he was "playing" with them. They had a conversation. It wasn't the doll playing that made me concerned, it was what the conversation was:

Mini-Zaera: "Why don't you love me?"  
Mini-Forte: "What do you mean? Of course I love you!"  
Mini-Zaera: "I really want you to love me, Aniki...maybe I should show you how much I love you?"

The rest of the conversation was lost. My eyes were glued on what exactly he was doing with the dolls. Well, his doll, specifically. He had opened it up, and those little organs on the inside, yeah, he fished them out and laid them on the floor in front of him.

"Zaera," I said in a warning tone, "whatever you're doing, stop it."

He didn't listen. Maybe he had a right to.

He picked up the one labeled stomach, or something like that, and crushed it between his fingers. Blood spurted out of his mouth and stained the white carpet. He picked up another one, I didn't get a chance to read the label this time, before it was smashed mercilessly. It was self-injury, to the extreme.

I grabbed his wrist. "Zaera, stop this."

"But maybe, Aniki," he whispered, "maybe if I'm all broken inside, I'll be more perfect on the outside. Then you'll love me more." And he continued smashing organs with his other, free, hand. I grabbed that one too.

"Zaera. I. Said. STOP."

He looked up at me, his mouth painted vermilion with the stains of his own blood. I carefully placed all of his organs (the ones that weren't smashed, at least) back into the doll's body, grabbed my doll, and locked them both up. Zaera might have been stronger than me, but I knew this was a gesture he wasn't going to go against. His whisper was so quiet that I almost didn't hear it.

"But Aniki," he breathed, a rustle in the wind, "I'm just showing you how much I love you. The ultimate."  
"What ultimate?" I snapped back.  
"Sacrifice," he whispered. "I would do anything for you, Aniki, anything you wanted me to do."  
"Then stop doing things like this, Zaera."

"But...I can't."  
"What do you mean you can't stop?"  
"I can't stop. My blood...all for you, Forte. All of this," he indicated the stained carpet, "for you. All of this...I...I need to give it to you."

* * *

He felt like he was indebted to me, that he needed to give his life for me. He was so needy. So very needy. And I couldn't help but comply. With his insane wishes, his disturbing fantasies, whatever he wanted. Why? I was stupid then.

But it was those words, "I can't stop", that alerted me to the fact that my brother had some serious mental issues.

But, in spite of all that, I still couldn't bring myself to push him away and just say "No."


	5. Yukidaruka

I didn't want to see Zaera hurt himself. I really didn't. That's why I was left with the alternative I had then: To let Zaera hurt me instead. Looking back now, I think that was kind of a stupid, and yet fabulous, idea, because Zaera wouldn't be hurt, and it would be easier on both of us. Of course, not saying that I really liked being hurt, but, you know. I guess there are just some things you do to protect people you care about. I don't say 'love', because I don't really believe that I was IN LOVE with Zaera. I loved him, but I wasn't IN LOVE with him. At least, not the way he was with me.

That's how it happened. That's how my mask became a broken helmet. It was even more broken than it had been before. And still, I let Zaera continue this madness. Because...well, what was I supposed to do? Stand back and watch my younger brother abuse himself to death?

He used to call those times, the times he came back from someplace or other with bloodlust in his eyes, he called them "Yukidaruka." Or, literally, "snow breaking," because my skin was supposedly 'almost as white as snow', and it often, no, let me rephrase that, ALWAYS broke during these sessions. I didn't know them as anything but pain. Of course, in a way, I suppose I accepted it as more than just pain, I think I thought of it as "pain for a purpose." Because, really, I didn't want Zaera to go around terrorizing his organs and stuff. He was my younger brother. What was I supposed to do?

Yukidaruka was often inflicted on me twice a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. But most often twice a week. There were times when Zaera just couldn't control his anger about something or other (usually because other members of the Espada were being dumbasses or making stupid remarks or something like that) and so he took it out on me. I let him. Maybe I should have stopped him. But at that point, hell, as long as he didn't crush his kidneys or something, I could take all the pain he could give me.

And then there were the times when Zaera just wanted to see me bleed. I don't understand what it was about my blood, but Zaera liked watching it, watching it as it ran in trickles down my heaving, aching body; he liked to reach out, running his fingers delicately along my chest, gathering up some blood on the pads of his fingers, and then bring it to his mouth and taste it. I think that's how Fornicaras was born; through my blood.

It was different, every single time. At least, the methods of torture were. There were so many different ways, that it all blends together now. But there were a few that stood out to me, even through that bloody haze of pain:

White Torture: It was heck of easy shit to complete White Torture in Las Noches, because everything was white. Zaera would leave me alone, strapped down to an examination table, with white everything all around me, where the only color was my skin and hair. And that was it. He would leave me there for excruciating periods of time in which I would start to hallucinate and dream up insane things that weren't actually there. Things that made me scream. And only when I had been scared out of my wits and slurring words together so fast that I wasn't coherent, only then would he let me go.

Shots/Medical Shit: I could take the shots. It was what was IN the shots that I couldn't handle. There were drugs in them; drugs that made me hallucinate, that made me see things that weren't really there, that made me feel as though I was flying high on a sense of pain, or, in other words, made me feel like I was a hardcore masochist. Which I really wasn't. And am not. Although I won't deny that Zaera and I seemed to have a very sadomasochistic relationship...

Chinese Water Torture: This shit actually works. It's freaky, but it does. It didn't "hurt," persay, but it was mental torture to the extreme. Basically, I would be strapped to an examining table, and water would be dripped onto my forehead, one drop at a time. It was infuriating. I could see each drop coming, and...I don't know what it was exactly about that premonition, but I knew exactly where and when every drop would hit, and what it would make me think. Those teensy drops of water reduced me to a blubbering mess on an examining table, because they awakened bad memories and created new ones for me. I really don't know why.

But there was one thing that never varied after each Yukidaruka. Zaera would always make sure to apologize after each of these sessions.

"Aniki," he whispered one day. I was almost unconscious at that point due to the amount of blood I had lost, and I was having trouble focusing on his words. "Aniki."  
"Wha'sup?" I mumbled, slurring my words.  
"I'm sorry," he breathed.  
"S'okay," I slurred back. And before I passed out, I felt his gloved hands picking me up and moving me somewhere else. Like an affectionate lover caring for their spouse.

* * *

I didn't care for pain. I really didn't. I only did it so that Zaera wouldn't hurt himself, so that he'd have someone else to hurt, someone who wasn't exactly valuable in the Army.

Grimmjow and the other Fraccion started noticing too.

"Hey, kid, what's with that huge ass scar on ya?" Grimmjow asked one day, while we were training.  
"Huh?"  
"The one on your back, dumbass. What's up with it?"

There had been a huge scar on my back, from the Yukidaruka I was still recovering from, the one I had just endured two days previously. But I smiled at him, smiled at the other Fraccion, and said, "Oh, it's nothing."

But Grimmjow knew I was lying. Like I said, I'm shit at lying. So what does the guy do? He goes up and pokes it. And God. One poke. That was all it took.

Before I knew it, I was on my hands and knees on the ground, pebbles digging into the palms of my hands, and dry heaving. I say dry heaving because there was nothing in my stomach to throw up. But that single poke that Grimmjow gave me, I don't know, maybe the scar was so sensitive and so painful then that I couldn't have done anything else. But it took everything out of me.

"Hey, kid, that scar sure ain't nothing, then, if you're like this." For the first time in his life, Grimmjow actually seemed concerned.  
"Yeah, you should take care of it." That was D-Roy. Master of the Obvious with a pillow on his head, right there.  
"Yeah," I said. "Don't worry, I will."

* * *

I started to come up with a Yukidaruka of my own, for Zaera. Maybe I shouldn't have. But at this point, there are too many maybes in what I did, that I guess I'm glad that I did what I did. It sure as hell got me out of a lot of suffering...

My Yukidaruka's only goal was to get me killed. While Zaera watched through those little bacteria things.

And it worked. Maybe it worked a little too well...because shortly after I died, shortly after the Winter War begun, Zaera was killed as well. And I hadn't intended for that to happen.

Then again, maybe he died on purpose, as if to say, "Ha! I'm not that stupid!"

The last few months of Zaera's life were actually rather interesting, come to think of it. Surveying from the dead, it's not hard to see his motives. But sometimes, sometimes...they're so complicated, so twisted, and so wrong, that it's often hard to know what he's getting at.

And yet...I can't help but wonder if I should have apologized after completing my Yukidaruka....


	6. Just a Set Up

As you should all know, I died. Well, I'm dead, I mean to say. I got killed on that journey to the real world with Grimmjow and the rest of the Fraccion. Hey, it was two on one. That scary little chick...thing and then that redhead with a fiery temper who seemed to think that I was highly effeminate and sarcastic. Well, when you're subject to torture twice a week, it's true. You do develop a sense of sarcasm. But effeminate? Girls don't normally have scars, do they?

But yeah. I died. I wasn't in pain. In fact, I think I was thinking, "Hell yes!" the second before I died. Simply because I had gotten myself out of Yukidaruka. And gotten back at Zaera for doing those things to me. Of course, I never apologized. So my plan was never completed. And, of course, as a famous poet who dug up a fieldmouse's home once said, 'The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.' And my plan went very, very awry.

* * *

After hearing that I had died, Zaera didn't say anything. Instead, he turned on his heel and calmly walked out of the room, as though nothing had happened. However, being dead, I had been granted this sense of perception, and I could tell that he was feeling furious, sad, frustrated, and wanted to kill himself all at the same time. Except, of course, he couldn't kill himself. Aizen-sama had specifically instructed him that he was not to kill himself.

So he didn't kill himself. Instead, he started self injury. Well, I won't say started, excuse me, but he picked up again on his habit of self injury. It had seemed to stop while I was still around, while I was still there for him to hurt, but then now, now that I was gone, it came roaring back. With the passion of ten thousand burning suns.

He cut, he burned, he injected himself. He bled, he cried, he often banged his head against some hard surface because he was frustrated and had all these other emotions that he didn't know how to control. He never slept (not that he had slept much before anyways), he never ate (not like he hadn't eaten enormous amounts before), he often screamed into a pillow or something, and I felt guilty. I felt sooo guilty. For doing this to him. For making him feel this way. Helpless.

Zaera's not helpless. In fact, he's one of the people who would appear to have the most help at his fingertips at any given time. Let's face it:

If he was injured beyond repair, he could use Gabriel to impregnate another person and then eat his way out of them. Except, of course, this made his hair "totally unmanageable" and this was the ability that killed him in the first place.

He could smash other's organs. Including his own. Which he now did on a constant basis.

He could eat his Fraccion to heal himself. Which he usually did after doing the whole organ smashing gig and coughing up at least a liter of blood, which would stain the white surroundings with crimson. Crimson stains that never got cleaned or bleached back to white. I think he requested that the stains be left there. Why? I don't know. I guess it made him feel less alone, made him feel as though I was still there, that it was my blood on the floor.

He had a carbon copy of me. Of course, it wasn't much use now that I was dead, but still, I guess sometimes he could pretend.

In the dead of night, to have someone to hug, even though the body was no longer warm.

To have someone to kiss, even though the lips no longer moved.

To have someone who let you do whatever you wanted to do to them, even though there were no longer protests and even though there was no longer blood.

To have someone who you could tell everything to, even though the ears no longer heard or listened.

To have someone who you could stare into their eyes for hours on end, because the eyes themselves were simply so beautiful, but to know that those eyes were just a glossy mirror and that they would never look at you again.

It must have been devastating for him.

I think he knew what was awaiting him after impregnating that one Kurotsuchi girl. I think he knew. And maybe that's why he did it. Maybe that's why he let himself get so injured that he allowed himself to use Gabriel on her, knowing that he would ingest those drugs to give him superhuman senses that would leave his body in the dust. Because he KNEW. Zaera knew everything. And he KNEW this would be the end.

He wanted to die, but Aizen had ordered him against it. So this was his chance. This was his chance to die with knowing. To die knowing that this was part of the plan, that he'd had it all planned out from the beginning and this was just the final step. To die an "honorable" death, the death at the hands of an enemy. Perhaps that was what it was. A whole plan for him to commit suicide without it appearing that he had done so.

I had not wanted Zaera to die. I had wanted him to get better, to figure out a solution for the problems he was having. But it hadn't worked out.

* * *

On February 18, exactly twenty years after he was born, Zaera Aporro Grantz died at the hands of Mayuri Kurotsuchi. A few months before that, I, his older brother, Il Forte Grantz, died at the hands of Ururu and Abarai Renji. And nobody suspected. Nobody knew. Everybody thought that it was just a slipup, that the Grantz brothers hadn't been strong enough, and that, consequently, they had died.

Nobody knew that it had just been a whole setup. A whole plan.

It wasn't carved on our gravestones: "Two brothers in a forbidden relationship, both dead, but because it had been planned that way."

That hadn't been written. In fact, nothing had been written. We were just buried under two rocks in the middle of Hueco Mundo.

But we knew. Me and Zaera, we both knew.

* * *

And when he was with me in that place between Heaven and Hell, I said to him, "Zaera."  
"What's up?" he asked, turning to me.  
"I'm sorry."

Then he smiled, something I hadn't seen from him in a long time. A pure, healthy smile. Then he took my hand, intertwining our fingers, and said, "It's okay, Aniki. It's okay."


End file.
